Optimising a page or article on your website and learning how to get on the first page of Google is pretty straight forward. You might hire Expert SEO Services to fine tune your work down the track, but anyone can do the most important work themselves.
If you want to land on Googles’ 1st page, it is unlikely to happen unless your site is correctly optimised for Googles search engine ranking factors.
“Penguin 4 is now here. And even though Google’s algorithms have matured greatly over the last four years, the fundamentals have not changed. Basic on page optimization is the first step to getting on the first page of Google.”
Top On-Site Ranking Factors for the First Page of Google
This Tutorial doesn’t guarantee you first place in Google, or any other search engine. But it does tell you what you need to do if you want to be in the running.
People are looking for relevant, well-presented information. If you want to rank first, both in Googles eyes and in the eyes of your website visitors, follow these simple steps.
Let’s start at the top of any page on your website and work our way down. Be methodical.
If you want to get on the first page of Google, then optimize your website pages using these ten steps.
1. Your Website URL
Your domain name should be short and sweet. It also helps if you can keep your product, post or service URL short also.
However, while it is good marketing to have a short domain name, it is not essential. www.boardgamegeek.com is not short. But it is the most popular board game website on the web.
More importantly, search engines and visitors will find using your website easier when you use URLs that accurately describe the pages content. We are talking about keywords. Words that clearly and very specifically describe what you do.
For example: is far better for both visitor and Google in understanding your page content than,
Ready for a killer keyword secret that’s free and requires no complicated software? Ask your friends what they would type in to Google if they were looking for ‘Blank’. Ask your mum and sister too!
I try this on my wife all the time and I walk away with some killer key words. Sometimes the solution on How to get on the first page of Google and other search engines is oh, so simple.
URLs are extremely vital to your SEO campaign. Be sure to use URLs that make it easy for Google to index your site. That means don’t go putting in dashes, dots and other symbols in your URL where they don’t need to be. Google can’t read.
So, you can make it easy for Google by using the most common phrases and basic language.
If you don’t have a Domain, you can search for great domain names at People’s Host (using our affiliate link). we use People’s Host and find them excellent.
Should I use .com, .net. or some other variation?
Factor to consider: Is your business trying to attract a local market?
If you are in the real estate game and your target audience is in Australia, it makes sense to go with .com.au. If you have a site that sells digital products that can be downloaded, then perhaps .com is a better option since it will catch a wider audience.
The flip side is that using .com will also increase your competition. That’s OK. We can find other ways to leap over your competition in the major search engines and we can still land 1st page in Google.
Don’t Fell Like reading? Watch a First Page Google Ranking in Action
2. Your Meta Title
This is a reference to your page title. The title tag tells Google in a few words what your page is about. If you don’t tell Google, it will guess.
You don’t want Google to guess.
It should be somewhere up near the top of your page code and is there by default in most platforms (WordPress, Magento, Joomla. Prestashop, etc). Google and other search engines want to see a consistent title structure from the top down. More on this below.
The title tag should only be used once on each page for best results. It can differ from your H1 Headline, if your site provides a separate section for your title – which most platforms do.
If you don’t provide a Title, Google will decide on a title for you. You don’t want that.
The most effective page titles are about 30-65 characters long, including spaces. Keep your titles concise and make sure they contain your best keywords. Each page should have its own exclusive title.
Google displays as many characters as it can fit into a block element that’s 512px wide and doesn’t exceed 1 line of text. So there is no golden figure when it comes to the number of characters your title will display.
Ultimately, only the characters and words you use will determine if your entire page title will be seen in a Google search snippet. Google used to count 70 characters in a title – but that changed in 2011/2012.
If you want to ensure your full title tag shows in Google search engine results page, stick to no more than 65 characters.
Title tags are important for SEO. They are the single most important on-site element in which to place keywords. Aside from simply describing the page, what do title tags provide? Three important benefits:
- They provide a concise description of the page (65 characters) for both users and robots
- Boiling a thought down to its essence provides keyword-rich content, which is great for search engines to classify content
- They provide a convenient headline to describe the page when it comes up on a search result page
3. Your Meta Description
The Meta Description does not appear on your page. It appears in the source code and Google reads it to decide what your site or article is about.
Meta descriptions are useful because they often dictate how your pages are shown in search results. For optimum effectiveness, meta descriptions should be 160-225 characters long.
Your meta descriptions should be concise and contain your best keywords or synonyms that are clearly related. It should also include a call to action. If you want people to click on your page in Google search results, say so!
Use a call to Action
“Click here for….” is fine to use and so is, “Act now and get…”, or, “Order cheap….” or, “Read our article on….”
Make sure each page of your website has its own meta description to avoid any duplicate content. Google won’t punish you for duplicate content used in the Meta Description.
However, if you have duplicate content then Google will decide for you which page to show for a particular subject. Again, you don’t want Google deciding what will appear in its search results.
For site title or description, simply use your right mouse button, choose Source (or Source Code) and then hit control F”. Type the word, “title” in the search that pops up at the bottom of your browser and it will take you to the title tag on that page.
4. H1 Headline
This is the title of your article as it appears on your web page. It may be different from the title you are hoping to rank 1st page of Google for and which is tucked away in your source code.
However, if you have not filled in a title tag section (Meta Title) then this is often the Title that Google will give to your article in search results.
If you have used a separate title tag for the purpose of search results, you have some flexibility here to increase the length of your article or use subtle variations of your keywords or key expressions you are wanting to rank for.
H1 tags tell Google what is important about your page. They back up the Title tag. You have a number of ‘H’ (Heading) options in your web page (H1, H2, H3). In an ideal world, you want these to appear in descending order.
Limit H1 and only use it once on your site. H2 for major sub headings and H3 for general category sub headings. For example:
- <H1>Cheap Paper Clips</H1>
- <H2>How to Buy our Discount Paper Clips</H2>
- <H3>View our range of Cheap Gold and Silver Paper Clips</H3>
Things to Remember
The Importance of an H1 Tag: The H1 is the most important tag and it should never be skipped on a page. Search spiders pay attention to the words used in the H1 tag as it should contain a basic description of the page content, just as the page <title> does.
Relevancy: Search engine spiders check the relevancy of the header tag with the content associated with it. Keyword Consistency: The search engine spiders check the keyword consistency between the header tags and other parts of the page.
Better User Experience: Heading tags give the user a clear idea of what the page content is about. Search engines give much importance to user-experience on a site, meaning the presence of heading tags becomes an important component of SEO.
5. Your Keywords and Alt Tags
Keywords are words and sentences that provide users and search engine with the exact purpose of your site. In the world of web marketing, they can either be long tail or short tail.
An example of a short tail keyword might be, “paper clips”. If your page is talking about paper clips, you want to make sure this word appears on your page – in moderation. Four times might be enough if your article is 500-750 words.
“Paper Clips” might also be highly competitive, and so, unless your site is actually called, “www.paperclip.com” you may want to build up your page using long tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords are longer sentences and are often easier to rank 1st page of Google for in the beginning. They are sentences or expressions that users might type into a search engine. “Buy cheap paper clips from China”. “Cheap paper clips made of gold”.
The beauty of long tail keywords is that they are easier to rank for in the early days. They build up authority, if used on all relevant pages of your site so that one day you just might rank on Google’s first page for, “Paper Clip” itself!
In a really competitive market, it may be necessary to have even longer sentences like, “Where can I buy Cheap African paper clips”. Of course, there are fewer users typing this in, but this is usually the best way to begin building authority in your niche.
You can also try synonyms as part of your overall content strategy. i talk at length about publishing content using this strategy in this article.
You can check common keyword usage by opening a Google Adsense account and using their free keyword tool. You can also check the similar search (related) feature that appears at the bottom of Google’s search page to research keyword opportunities.
If you really want to simplify things, just take a look at the ads and the expressions they use. They are paying big money for those ads and have done their research on what get the clicks. Thanks big business for giving us the information we need!
Limit your target Keywords.
You want your keywords sprinkled naturally through out your introduction and the body of your article.
Every page on your site should be optimised using a single keyword or phrase. So, don’t try and rank for “Paper Clip Farm”, Office Stationary”, “Offices Supplies” all on the one page. Use these expressions only to back up your main Gig – Cheap Paper Clips.
This will avoid diluting your effort. Too many repetitive terms might mean that Google can’t figure out what to rank you for in its search results. Go for one long tail and maybe two short tail keywords at a time. All other expressions or synonyms are their to back you up.
As an example, the article you are reading right now is optimised for “website optimisation tips” and “1st page of Google”. These are both ridiculously competitive, short tail keywords and so I have also added two long tail keyword expressions. Do you know what they are and where they are located?
6. Alt Tags and Image Attributes
Alt tags are similar to title tags and description tags – and there are two of them. They help Google to understand your pictures. Use them on every image and make them all different.
More importantly, make sure they relate to your article or product and that they build on your main keyword phrase.
For example, “Paper Clip”is a suitable alt tag (attribute) if your photo is, in fact, a photo of a paper clip. “Affordable Paper Clips” might be a good tag to use with your images title tag.
Image attributes also make your site more user-friendly. Those who are vision impaired and those who have images turned off (in an effort to block ads) can still follow along by hearing the image text attribute or seeing it appear on the page.
You are also more likely to have your images appear in Google’s image search results – a nice bonus, especially if you are trying to flog products whose major appeal is visual. Jewellery comes to mind.
7. Your Internal Links
Internal links are the links on this page that point to other information in this site. They are a backlink telling Google that you have other important information and that it should go and take a look.
These type of links are useful for three reasons:
- They allow users to navigate a website.
- They help establish information hierarchy for the given website.
- They help spread link juice (ranking power) around websites.
Anyone who has learned How to get on the First page of Google has learned this lesson: Internal linking helps lay the foundation of all your SEO efforts.
It allows you to indicate to search engines which pages of content are the highest priority, as well as which pages are thematically related to one another.
These signals are incredibly helpful to search engines in ascribing value and meaning to your pages, and if you don’t take the time to manage these signals via strategic internal linking, you’ll be at the mercy of the search engines’ judgement call.
In the limited time that Google spends on your site, the last thing you want is for it to be confused about where you want to be ranked and which pages are high priorities.
In this case, I want some of my other related (but less important) pages to point to this one. I also want this one to link to my page about our plans and pricing for small business because it’s relevant to this article and it’s the page I want my clients to visit if they are planning to use Mallee Blue’s SEO service.
Did you like the way I did that? Avoid artificial internal linking. Aim for a natural approach that does not jerk your reader about. Google isn’t the only one ranking your page. You also want your visitors to put you on the 1st page of their internal Google algorithm!
8. Your Outbound Links
Although it may seem strange, Google acts positively toward the external links that point to authoritative sites in an article. Pick your sites carefully. Use sparingly.
Google ultimately wants its users to find what they are searching, so when you link to other authoritative and relevant websites, you are providing a great service to Google’s users. This makes your website a more valuable resource.
Given what we know about Google, it would make sense that you may be able to improve your site’s authority and perceived relevance—two extremely important factors for getting ranked on search engines—by linking to high authority websites and relevant websites.
Garbage in, Garbage out
If your site links to garbage, won’t people think your site is garbage too? That’s why link farms and reciprocal link schemes are such a bad idea. Sites that link to crappy resources show the world that they don’t care what they say or recommend.
They’ll do anything to get attention, including keyword spam and link spam. No wonder Google and the other search engines remove or down rank such “spammy” sites.
By linking to quality resources that help your visitors, you can improve your reputation with real visitors. That ultimately leads to more inbound links and higher response rates.
With good information and a nice selection of outbound links, visitors may even bookmark your site and use it as a jumping off point. People like information that is corroborated by other sources, and they like web sites that help them learn more about a topic of interest.
Don’t be a Link Stinge
“But don’t I need to conserve my page rank?” asks the link miser. No, you don’t. There are many factors that affect search rankings, including relevancy, and your site’s reputation.
For more detail on page rank have a look at this article.
Sometimes you have to give away Page Rank to improve your reputation and make your site more valuable so it accumulates more links. In time you may end up with a higher Page Rank than if you tried to hoard all those links.
Whenever you use a term that your audience might not understand, consider linking to an authoritative definition. Search for the best available definition.
Here are few suggestions for creating outbound links:
- Links to pages which actually add value and cover the topic really well.
- Link to blogs having good PR or Successful blogs.
- Link to the others in your niche and create a valuable network.
- Keep them nofollow on most occasions
One more thing. People argue over whether such links should open in new window or not. I want them to. I don’t want to lose my place on the page by clicking an external link. I want it open so I can read it later. Some use a right mouse click to achieve this. You be the judge.
9. Your Page Speed
Google gives favour to fast websites. If you want to get 1st page of Google search engine results listing, make your website as fast as you can without compromising on site quality and value.
You can check the speed of your website or page using Pingdom. Go on, do it now.
Website visitors tend to care more about speed than all the bells and whistles we want to add to our websites. Additionally, page loading time is becoming a more important factor when it comes to search engine rankings.
Speed Equals Money
Research by Kissmetrics has shown that a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. In dollar terms, that means that if an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a 1 second page delay could potentially cost them $2.5 million in lost sales every year.
A while back, Marissa Mayer of Google shared some very compelling research results at a Web 2.0 conference. In essence, she stated that an additional delay of 0.5 seconds to page-load time caused a 20% drop in traffic. Amazon has also found that a millisecond can cost them millions.
Speed Equals Money. Your customers want speed and most people will leave if your page takes more than 3 seconds to load.
How fast should it be?
Google measures your site using a a metric called Page Speed Score. It has a range between 0 – 100 points. The better a site performs, the higher the score it receives; Google considers a site to be performing well if it has a score of 85 or above.
Under 2 seconds is what you should aim for. But, don’t panic about that. I made a tidy sum in an e-commerce site that used to take 5 seconds to load. It’s not the only thing that matters – but it does matter. Especially if you are wanting to get your site on the 1st page of Googles search listing.
How can I speed it up?
In addition to a site speed audit, there are a number of things you can do yourself.
- Get a good host.
- Keep image size small
- Avoid linking and depending on external feeds where possible.
Avoid bells and whistles and moving doo-dats, and silly plugins, carousels and other bits that serve no valuable purpose. Does your site really need a live weather map and 60 social accounts with a live feed? You might want to also re-think your bloating Google ad campaigns.
10. Your Sitemap
Remember, you’re optimizing your pages to be searched by robots and robots eat sitemaps for breakfast. So, your sitemap needs to be present, readable and crawl-able. If it isn’t, then you’re unlikely be seen on the first page of anything.
Sitemaps are the list of all those keyword rich URL’s you have been creating. They also contain valuable information on your sites titles and the weight of importance each type of page should have on your site.
Most platforms have a sitemaps generator (Prestashop, WordPress, Joomla, etc). If you don’t have one, you can make your own here.
There are two kinds of site maps. xml and html. You want both. Google uses xml and Bing and yahoo still favour sitemap.html. Site visitors also use your .html map.
There are many web optimization tips and tricks that help in optimizing a site but one of those, the importance of which is sometimes underestimated is sitemaps.
Sitemaps, as the name implies, are just a map of your site – i.e. on one single page you show the structure of your site, its sections, the links between them, etc. Sitemaps make navigating your site easier and having an updated sitemap on your site is good both for your users and for search engines.
Sitemaps are an important way of communication with search engines. While in robots.txt you tell search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, in your site map you tell search engines where you’d like them to go.
Sitemaps are not a novelty. They have always been part of best Web design practices but with the adoption of sitemaps by search engines, now they become even more important than ever.
By the way, despite what others might tell you. I’m telling you that you don’t need to bother about adding your sitemap to Google or Bing Webmaster tools. If you have any decent content, they will find it pretty quick.
And, if you have accomplished the easy website optimisation tips list above, you might see your article or product ranking on the first page of Google sooner than you think.
Go and have a coffee or a walk in the park instead.
Howdy! My wife and I also publish guest articles for other web site owners to help increase exposure to our work, as well as provide good content to site owners. It really is a win win situation! Kudos!
That is some inspirational stuff. Never knew that opinions could be this varied. Be certain to keep writing.
Your page is so useful and really improve some things that I missed before. Everything with fully explanation and comprehensive information support. Really like you a lot.
I have a question, is it necessary to make site map and submit to Google web-master tool ? i am a beginner in making blogger but my keyword never better than top 10.Maybe10-30. something like that, which mean i must have some things need to improve but I really don’t know how to improve. Can u give me a suggestion on how to make better ranking and help me to solve site map problems?
Once thanks for your article, cheers:)
hi, guys, this was really very informative.Actually i need help, i have been doing seo with the collaboration of my partner, we ranked at the bottom of first page but after few days our site vanished and now its hardly seen. i am really tensed as so much was depending on our plans.
we have built around 16,000 links and nothing has worked, like as web 2.0, sites that allows commenting.
also i am willing to ask that how am i supposed to remove the bad links??
kindly help i will appreciate it a lot
Hi Tammy, sounds like things have not gone so well. Happy to help. Drop me an email and let me know the site and the keywords you were hoping to optimise for search. I tried emailing you but your email address bounced.
Hi David, Wonderful article and very helpful. Could you please email me, would you be interested in doing this for our website?
Hi Olga,
Shoot through an email to service@malleeblue.com and let me know what you think you are needing in terms of on site SEO and I can take a look your site and propose a strategy.
Kind Regards,
David Trounce
Thanks for the tips. I hadn’t noticed that my sitemap was missing until I read this and decided to go and check. I have now submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools and will wait and see how long it takes to index.
Excellent sharing. Being a Social marketing specialist I appreciate your post. You’ve explained what I need to do for my on page optimization to a tee!
Glad you found the article useful, Andrew. Enjoy your day.
Thanks for sharing this valuable post. It’s hard getting a post on first page of Google. Your are step by step described a better post making idea.
Very informative article. Thank you very much, I shall be putting your tips to work, as I have a guitar tuition website that struggles to get recognized by Google.
Thank you so much for your article. It gives me a great explanation of what needs done to all of my pages on my website I am building. I am currently on the 3rd page of Google for “Chris Brown Facts.” After reading this article I would assume that it might go up a little. I had a lot of this information in play already but if you would like to view what I have, please do so and any advice will be very appreciated.
Hi Adam. Glad you found the article helpful. Let me know the site you are trying to rank for and I will take a look.
I use presta shop to build my sites. I currently have
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) SEO Expert SEO Manager SEO Meta Tags Generator Ultimate Google Rich Snippets
Is it a good practice use all?
Also if you are doing a description in the body are you also stating that you should use a h1 and then go into full description.
Thank you in advance for your assistance. I have not had any feedback from the forums in presta shop and thought that since you commented on it that I could seek your advice plus I know one of the companies that you mentioned. Small world. Great writing and Great Reading!!! Thank for sharing!!!
Happy to help, Gloria and I have sent you an email.
Hi I’m trying to learn all this too and have a question…Do you need to update your Sitemap every time you edit something in your post after it’s been published?
Hi Aaron. No, it should update automatically if you are using a WordPress Plugin.
Thank you very much, It gives me a great explanation of what needs to be done to all of the pages on my website.
Wow! This is amazing information! I am starting a web design business, but I was thinking of doing SEO instead. Maybe I’ll start the web design business and just offer SEO as an add on. Or maybe just freelance SEO. Well anyways, thank you so much!
Thanks this article is really helpful.
There’s something beyond meta tags (Titles, description, keyword, etc.) and that’s a great and quality content. Google loves fresh content so a nice article or content could really help you to get on top in search results of Google.
Thank your articles is very impressive for a new webi like me.
Hey Chez, glad you found it useful.
The problem I am having with my site is that I have no keywords. I know absolutly nothing about keywords or keyword research so I am stuck. Google knows my website exists because when I go to google and type in my website URL in the search box and hit enter my site and site pages are the very first thing that shows up in the search results so google knows my site exists it just probably thinks I never used any keywords because it’s true I didn’t so it has no clue where to place my keywords. I was kind of hoping you could shed a little more light on keyword research or do you have another article that goes into more details on this subject? None of my content is keyword friendly I just typed it all up and put it in there. Great article I will implement these things and see what I can get out of it.
John, keyword research is easier than many make it out to be. Start with this resource and let me know if you want some further help. https://www.malleeblue.com/how-to-build-powerful-internal-links-for-your-website/
I followed this advice and within 2 hrs i was 4th on the first page of google after 6 months of trying. Thanks for the help. I looked at other websites source codes and keywords and this help to change mine.
Very happy
Stephen, delighted to know that it helped. Keep in touch and let me know if you need anything more.
This article is really helpful for seo I will learn new things from here!
I loved how you were able to synergize the hummingbird benefits into ranking well. I’m pushing clients to do the same 🙂
Hi, David
I came across your website. You have really great techniques using Keywords, Meta Tags, and having a Google Friendly Web page. The 10 steps involved to create a google friendly website. I did not even think about this. You really explained it very detailed. I am going to start using this technique..Thank You for posting.
Great article! And right on the 1st page 🙂
Thanks for the great posts, we have used everything listed. Have a pretty good SEO guy and rank on page one organically for most of our keywords. That being said, we would rather rank on the first page of google maps/places/gplus, what ever its called now. We have 32 positive reviews and can’t seem to break and hold onto the first page. Many people have tried. any help would be great.
Hugely valuable information and I’m sure it took quite some time to put together.
Thank you so much for sharing it and excellent work!
Cheers,
Randy
I really enjoy reading your down to earth, concise article on SEO and how to promote via social media. I’ve started painting circle as a way for local painting artists to instruct everyday people to paint for fun last year, and it has evolved into a small growing start-up business. The website however poorly position on searches at the moment and need someone honest and a true expert to help me get it on Google first page result.
Hi, We are a 2 years established business . We have been on page one of Google listings for years but now on page 6. We haven’t had client calls in 6 months. Any ideas for us?
Hi Mohammed, it appears the site may have been sand-boxed by Google. The site could also do with a design upgrade to improve speed, mobile and tablet use, time on site and user interaction which are all ranking factors in Google. Let me know if I can be of more help.
I’ve just been searching for info approximately this topic your blog is the best I’ve came upon so far,Thanks your blog is very helpful to me,
David – I am a teacher in Australia. Scunderwood holds the first 8 places on google. How can I make money from viewership and advertising on google,.
Victorian Year 12 Specialist Maths course here. Should I build my own site that can advertise? Can I make money from wikispaces? My site has had more than a million views each year yet I don’t make a cent from it… Thanks
Thanks for stopping by. Hi Shane, see email I sent you earlier.
Really good and descriptive SEO in Ten Easy Steps………….
Thanking You,
I read through your article, and I must admit it really opened up my eyes.
I have a business doing window blinds in south africa and we recently launched our website .
However , after following all the steps as instructed in you article, I still can not get my website to the first page on google search engine.
Can you perhaps tell me what am I doing wrong or help me out .
Thank you
Nice article, learn new tips for my site.
Great article on of the best I have read in a long time, no wonder it’s at the top of Google. The biggest SEO advice I have taken from this is know your topic and add value to the web. Which this article clearly does.
Thanks Richard. Some things don’t change. My motto has always been, if what you’re doing is working, keep doing it.
Nice articles. It is very useful.
Awesome Article, learn useful tips for my site. thanks for sharing
Hey. Awesome article! i use most of these tips on my blog, but every article that i made only appears on the 2º page of Google, i don’t know if i need more time or something else, but when i post a new article, after some minutes it is always on the second page and continuous on the 2º page , how can i change that?
Hi, let me know your URL, and give me an example of an article and its keyword and I will take a look.
Hi. Thanks for answering me so fast!
First of all: I’m Brazilian and my language is portuguese, so my article is in portuguese.
For Example:
Targeted Keyword: melhores franquias do Brasil
Article URL: http://www.melhorfranquia.com.br/2015/07/as-melhores-franquias-do-brasil-2015.html
Thanks once again.
I appreciate the attention!
Matheus. You are on the right track. What you need to work on is some social signals. Make sure you are sharing the article across a number of Social Media Sites.
Also create a free Scoop.it, Reddit, Twitter, Rebel Mouse or Pinterest account to increase traffic.
If you can add a video or some good images that will also help. Just remember to optimise those images.
Finally, and most importantly, move the add at the top off the page (at least until you are on page one for a while) and move that external link in the first paragraph way down the page – preferably after your own internal links.
I been trying to get my site on first page for some time now and have no luck at all. I tried a lot of changes updates and read lots of seo articles but cant seems to get it on the first page. I don’t know what could be wrong. I never see any organic search traffic only garbage.
I guess I will check again see if things could get any better on pages that will land me on first page of google.
Thanks for posting unique details.
Hey Bishal, thanks for passing through.
Awesome article!
Thanks for shearing with us this reach informative article.
I manage to have 1 of my article ranked 1 on google 1st page now. I said luckily cause I have no idea what I did and ever since then have been try to get another of my article on google 1st page but no luck.. Please can you run a check on my site and see what make that particular article unique and what have been doing wrong with other post.
Thank you already…
Hi Dammy. Send me your details using our SEO quote page and i will see what I can do for you.
Please make my site first.
Hi Sama, sure. Fill in a Proposal form on the Quote page and I will see what I can do.
Seems very promising. Im gonna try this on my new site.
thanks for sharing this.
very helpful for seo learner.i am learning this and try to apply for my work.
Hi. Can this be applied to a blog in blogspot? I have tried many tehniques and still my blog is not even on the second page of google . Thank you
HI Poz,
Yes it can. send through an article and I will optimise it for you as a freebie. How about that?
Hey thanks for the tips. I’m new to blogging and am trying to gather as much info as possible. I found this very helpful!
Hey, that’s great Priya. All the best.
I appreciate everything you have added to my knowledge base.Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer.
I am going to bookmark your website. You have great tips that I can use for my clients. I hear that backlinks are the number one thing to getting ranked on the first page of Google. Is this true? I hear others saying it’s all about social media signals now.
Thanks for the great article. I am really impressed and It’s helpful for newbies.
Amazing, incredible information, a great way to increase the SERP position.
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful information. I was missing few of them, now definitely I will be using this on my blog.
Cheers
Hi Rabin, glad you found the information useful.
Great article! You could add internet Vista to the bucket list, they have the capabilities to monitor a website though.
Thanks for the knowledge to the first page of google. very useful for me who is studying …
Nice article, tips will help for our web hosting & web services site.
These SEO tricks will help us for our great hosting offers and posts.
I try everything but no change on the my rank. If there anyway to check my website and can you tell me what I am doing wrong.I am very very greatly appreciated.
Hi Frank, what keywords are you trying to rank for? You have some on page optimisation issues – no Headings or heading (H1, H2, H3, etc) structure. Meta descriptions and titles are over-optimized (too many words). Use the outline above to guide you in fixing these pages. If you would like some more detailed help, Frank, send me an email using the contact (quote) form on the site and I would be happy to help you.
Hi David. First how do you ever expect anyone to share this article?; it is the best overall SEO in a minute course I’ve read. Seriously. There’s no way I can share this page and let my competitors see all this good stuff!
Now to business. I’ve just redone my entire html site and created a WordPress one. I held number one position for “makeup artist Toronto” for 10 years until Google Penguin! So I. Starting from scratch. I have just gone live so I haven’t event gone through every page but by it to really overhaul th SEO effort. That is next but I have two key questions.
Question 1. The theme I use has set a default for all my page titles to also be the H1 header
Is that good or bad for SEO? I don’t like to do boring “people can see” headlines that would just restate my keywords so that seemed good to me.
Question 2. This question is more about the mechanics of the copy. I’ve noticed in Safari on my iPad that when I’m given the option to click on the reader view that avoids presenting images & graphics that not all of my copy shows up. But the website now holding the #1 spot has all her copy showing in reader view. It would seem there is something blocking the safari browser from seeing there is more to read on my page, so I assume Google may not be detecting all that I have on my front page.
Thanks for an amazing article. This write up deserved the Google ranking it got!
Sorry I forgot to tell you David, and this will lead to question 3…this website is a new URL from my original one. It’s currently ranked on page 7. My original site, non-Wordpress, is on page 2. It’s 15 years old and has a lot of page authority. I will be redirecting it permanently but so many of its internal pages come up for subsearches…when I permanently redirect that site I assume Google will deindex all its subpages…I have been redirecting some key subpages already and if you type in “makeup lessons Toronto” for example, I rank page one for both the old and new site. But here is my question finally….if I 301 redirect the old site landing page to the new one and it doesn’t inherit all the authority and Google juice, I will lose my 2nd page ranking for the old site and my new site is only on page 7 now for makeup artist Toronto. How reliable is a redirection for passing on page authority and will Google deindex every page (about 300 of them) once the front page is a 301 redirect?
See above comment about 301 redirects.
Hi Colette,
Your H1 tags are correct – you want it to be the title of your article and you want your keyword to appear once in the title and once in the description.
Mobile display: Have you tested on any other devices? It may be a setting in one of your plugins (Jet Pack comes to mind) or the theme itself. It may be some edits that you have made to the css. I would need to see the back end of your WP site to figure out what the rendering issue is on iPad Safari.
Redirection. Provided there are no penalties, a permanent 301 redirect is the recommended strategy by Google. You will receive some benefit, but not all. I would consider a couple of other options:
1. Given the authority of the old site, you could create a high class micro site for lead capturing – have it as a second funnel of traffic and enquiries.
2. If you do redirect instead, try and communicate with Webmasters who are pointing to the old site and ask them to update their link (the good quality links) to the new site.
It’s a slow process (number 2) but will help beef up the link juice going to the new site.
3. Which ever way you go, I would look to doing 3-6 months of solid link building using on ly high quality links for your new site. Links that are Penguin proof and that give you a long term boost in the search engines.
I sympathise with you having to re-vamp your site, but often it gives the whole marketing of your business a new lease on life.
You can rank with images and you can definitely use Social Media to promote your images and your pages. Incorporating an on site SEO strategy with some good off site link building and a social media strategy would be a great way to generate new traffic to the new site.
I hope that helps. Let me know if I can help further.
Hi There!!! Looks like you have done a hell lot of research on Google ranking and indexing factors. Well Thanks for sharing such great article on how to rank on google.
Thanks Shivani. Glad you found the article useful.
These are 10 Awesome tools to find killer long tail keywords.
Targeting the best and profitable keywords is the most important part of successful blogging and it’s also true for every sites belonging various niche.
I have seen many bloggers making the mistake of not targeting Right keyword. Great on page optimisation, David.
7. Your Internal Link ..
Is this how to make internal links manually one by one or can also use the tools auto link.
9. Your Page Speed
How to cope with the size of the photo, while my website does require a large-sized photo.
Its best to create your internal links manually when you are placing them in the content itself. You could try tinypng.com to reduce the size of your images.
Excellent article…
That was some of the most useful advice I’ve ever read, thanks! David, I run a blog. Is it too late to change existing posts to fit your guide?
Not at all. In fact, you will often see a very quick lift or 30% or more in search results, just by optimising these on site factors – well worth the effort.
This blog very helpful for seo person and who will need to 1st page on google.
Thank you for sharing. it’s valuable tutorial and information.
Btw, i have some problem about SEO on my blog. Would you inform me how to customize it on blogger? Thanks
very helpful, thank you so much,These tips are really great using h1 tags, and there should be the keyword in h1, h2 and h3 tags. Using bold and italic keywords are also necessary.
these information are very important.
Thank you to share a helpful website which is very important for me, because I’m a new freelancer.
Thanks for this fabulos post..since its very hard to get 1st page on google.. but as your step by step guide will surely help us to increase google Page rank..
Thank you to share a helpful website which is very important for me, because I’m a new freelancer.
For a new website/blog do you recommend posting several posts to your site before launching and making sure they are all done using the tips above?
Yes, Tarin. I do. Google recommends you have all these things in place from day one.
Hi David,
Great Post.
I’m wondering if you could help me with this scenario. I’ve a set of sites for a specific niche. For some time I’ve built a good reputation and google ranking. In the last year a new site appear, which I can guarantee, that does not follow half of the recommendation every SEO expert will apply, but for some reason, it ranks 1st in the most trafficked keywords, and growing. The site has little content (less than a 1% of the indexed pages I have), but for some reason, it ranks first. I analyzed their backlinks, the complete site code, etc. and still clueless of why it has so much organic traffic and good ranking.
Can you help me with this ?
Thank You
Hi Alejandro. I can’t really comment without seeing the sites in question. I can say from experience that they usually don’t last long and if you stay the course you will only improve your position.
My website rank drop overnight i was in first page on google for daycare furniture and daycare supplies. i work hard for these keyword i had issue with 301 and 302 wanted my site to run on https after i purchased EV SSL. My host gave me the code to put on .htaccess it was a wrong code, now i have the right code its fine but i got down from first page to 4th page. Any advise? kinda hopeless now.
Hi Ali. How did you go with this after we spoke? Have you seen some improvement?
Great guide, I have new blog, I wonder if you can put it on the first page of google
Hi Antonio. No problem, Happy to do that for you. re-check your site now. It should be there on the first page. If not, I can call Google and ask them to bump it up a few spots or you.
Hi David,
Need your advice.
For a blog, is it necessary to web optimize using seo plugin?
I’m asking because..
1. WordPress have their own setting for seo
2. My wp-theme already provide with seo setting
3. Then I have installed all-in-one seo plugin for seo optimization
Is it ok to do 3 of this for seo?
Is there any conflict will cause me to get smack by search engine?
Please advice as I’m going to restart my blogging career.
Shaiful, you don’t need a plugin. If you do use one, I think Yoast is pretty good. Genesis Framework is even better!
Hello David,
I have posted this one before at google forum and very thankful to all of the members there for the tips on how to place my website on the first page once it search for a certain keywords. I have done most of the advice what was suggested to me, but still Im lagging behind the search to 5th page
What am I doing wrong? it will be much appreciated to any one who can help me David?
Alex
Happy to help. Send through an email via the contact form and I will take a look at your site.
just starting out and going through the checklist – thank you for all the info ~ very helpful
Steve, glad you found it helpful. Nice site you have… however… the site “wobbles” on my screen when I scroll the home page. Also and this is very important if you want to rank – your home page does not show me what a user would have come there for – the product. Be sure to put a quality image of what you are offering on the home page.
Hi David, yes I’m not sure how I encountered this problem – I am not a web designer or an SEO expert, just teaching myself through blogs like yours and google.
I intentionally didn’t place too much on the home page as I wanted my home page to have a decent speed which I thought was more important? thanks again for your info and help 🙂
Yes, speed is critical – but so is user intent. Google measures page speed as a ranking factor, but even more important, Google measures time on site. If a user comes to your site from Google and then heads back to Google 10 seconds later, Google sees this and assumes your site was no good for whatever query the user entered in to its search. So, you have to strike a balance. One decent, light-weight image, along with a very clear call to action or offer can make a world of difference.
Give me a shout if you need a hand. I charge through the roof for my consultations and services, so, they must be good, right? 🙂
I’m getting a good bounce rate of 38% at (high 80’s before) since I have made my changes etc ~ like I said, very new to this so I expect copious amounts of learning and getting things wrong but it seems to be pulling in a few customers at present 🙂
I was hoping the first page forced people to look at the next page to see if it was they wanted
appreciate your reply ~ Thank you, looking forward to your next posts 🙂 very informative and knowledgeable
Hi David
I’m so glad I found this post!! I set up my own small business and I’m struggling with everything I need to know & do to help bump myself up on google. I have been trying to teach myself as I go (not ideal I know, but I dont have a huge budget for website help etc!!) but this has really helped me so a massive thank you, I’ve now got to try & put it all into practice!! I hope you dont mind if I pop back and ask a few questions?
Hey Leanne, jump in any time and ask questions. I know how it is with starting out. Feel free to use the UK phone number at the bottom of the page if you want to speak to a real, live, living me!
Hi David
Thats great thank you! I’m going to spend a day today going through my website!! coffee & biscuits at the ready!!
Leanne, thanks for stopping by. Glad you found the ideas helpful.
Hi David.
I was hoping you could take a look at my site and help me get on the first page of google. The site hasnt been active very long. I get an average of around 50 people a day on it at present. My page rank is currently non existant and i have run out of ideas. The market i am in is highly competitive mind.
Thank you
Hey Michelle, drop me a line and let me know what keywords you are currently trying to rank for.
Just awesome, Thanks for sharing such a nice article.
Keep writing excellent,I have got a lot of knowledge, its very helpful to me.
Hi David
I find it an awesome article, really enjoyed it as it gives practical advices.
I would appreciate if you could look through my website and see if i’m in the right track to rank page one and if not please let me know how to improve it…thanks again.
So insightful about XML sitemaps. It’s really hard to get your hear around site maps if you’ve never used one before.
David,
Thank you. This has been the most comprehensive and easy to follow guide for this topic I’ve come across. I’ve already made some changes and am looking forward to continuing to implement in the future.
Glad to hear it was useful, Carly.
Hi David,
Thanks for the article, I implemented your points but still don’t get a google ranking on my web site, I paged through many pages and it just does not come up, any suggestions? I am using weebly.com to generate the site.
Hi Brian,
What keywords are you going for and how old is your domain?
Weebly is not ideal. A host provider like Vidahost or Crazy Domains would be better. however, if its a good clean site, changing to a different host may not be so important.
On a more general note, it’s not only what your doing that effects ranking but also what your competitors are doing. Take http://www.odhco.com.au/ as an example. You are both ranking for “Wollongong accountants”.
What do they have going for them that you could compete and improve upon?
They are blogging – putting out new content
They have full schema mark up showing there location
They are interacting on social media
They have an optimised Google Local Page
They have optimised titles and descriptions for their location
These are important ranking factors that you can take advantage of – just for starters.
I use to rank on page 1 of Google for keyword Computer Repair Ottawa. But I changed my website design, so now I rank on the 2nd page of Google. How can I go back to position on page 1 of Google? Your suggestions would be highly appreciated. Please check my website and get back to me with more information.
Melad, You need someone to do an audit on your site. Or, you can do one yourself. Start by looking at your webmaster tools in Google and look for any anomalies.
Great post. I have competitor’s blog on 1st position on 1st page in google. That blog is old 6 years but is not updated since May 2014 and is just one post with a lot of content. I don’t understand why is so strong?
Jelena, to answer that question I would need to know which sites your are referring to. Shoot me an email.
Nice tutorial buddy. I really like it. Thanks!
Hi David,
As a graphic designer I sometimes create websites as well and although not I’m not a coder or developer, I still need to be able to provide an end product that is both attractive and useful.
I consistently tell my customers that although I am not an SEO expert, I know a few basics. Well I know a lot more now thanks to your well laid out article. Thank you for putting the time into compiling this info – I know I will be referring to it a lot in the future.
Cheers!
Hey, Andrew, thanks for the feedback. Love your site – so far. If there is anything I can do for you, let me know. I always enjoy giving small online business an edge when I see they are serious about what they are doing.
Nice article, learn new tips for my site.
Thanks
Thanks, Lingesh.
It would be super if it would be just those 10 steps… I – as a SEO-freelancer – developed my own SEO checklist over the years with at least 300 different things to take care of…
Hi, thank-you for the article. I was wondering about the site map in html part where you say to put it in the footer. I don’t see one in the footer here on this site unless I missed it.
Is it because WordPress themes have sitemaps built in for bots to read, like what yoast and others do, create and make sitemaps?
Is it still required for WordPress blogs or were you referring to static sites? If you could clarify the footer sitemap part it would help a lot, then I would need to find a plug in that does it and puts the html info into the footer somehow. I am a newbie so learning fast and hard and need anything I can get to help bring traffic my way.
Nah, you can live without it quite well. Though Google Sitemap Plugin is still a good way to help Google along.
Great Job Bro ! Because you well explain every articles so that why i join your blog daily i got many info in this blog Keep it up
Nice post, i follow your step by step!
Very simple, but need more practice for me..
Thanks yea!
Hey 🙂 I did everything in here on my website but I still won’t rank first page in google even for low competition keywords. I have great content and everything…is it because the domain is new? I always hear how “content is king” but I see spammy websites with crappy content ranking better than me.
I’ve analysed the top competitor in my industry (web design) based on Google’s rankings for Australia and it’s reaffirmed the effectiveness of Google best practices.
I created a new website,How to Get Back Links, My site Showing 3 or 4th Page in Google,Hot to get Top Page, Please Help Me Sir,
Hi, Im trying to rank for the keyword of Hawaii Photographer. I am on Page 2, back in the day my website use to rank for 167 first place first page raking. I rebuilt my site and reduced the number of pages from 1200 to 240 pages. It is slowly coming back, but nothing like it did in the past. Any chance you could take a look? Aloha, Anthony
Nice article! Very impressive and attractive title of the this post. Nicely explained. Well done and thanks…!
Thank you very much for this help- a. informative article. I’m applying all these techniques and already got a big improvement on our antivirus-site.
so far, I just ignore the internal link, i has just focused on external link,, After this I will create interlank also.. Thanks for your nice article
Can we create as many as backlink to make web in the first page??
Hi David, thank you for sharing your valuable information with us. It is most appreciated. I have been working very hard on my site and I cannot get past the bottom of page 2 in google. I am not a coder so got someone to make the schema identifying that I am a local business, a limousine hire business, but now there are errors in my search console as he put it in a taxi.
Also, my robots text is not restricted but my google account says that google can only access partial of my site as the css and js is blocked. My last problem is I want to do quality link building but am scared of sharing my content or placing my link anywhere now in case google don’t like it. I have implemented all of the strategies you listed above. Can you help?
Nice article! Very impressive and attractive title of the this post. Nicely explained. Well done and thanks…!
let’s make great website
I have applied all the rules you stated in your blog but my website is not coming in the prominent page of google can you guide me with some more tips.
For sure, try this rippa tactic – it really shouldn’t be called a tactic, it should be called a smart basic foundation upon which to gain traction in the search engines.
Many thanks for the blog. After working on our seo finally I came across a post that clearly shows what you need to do for your site.
Few questions:
assume you want to rank for “red book”, based on your recommendation, this is my understanding
create URL/redbook
put a description about red book
put “red book” as title
put a related h1 tag for red book
question 1: can you use “red book” for both title and H1? how would google react to this?
I am looking at this page, and I see that you have
title: “The First Page of Google and How I Get my Clients There”
h1: “First Page of Google and How I Get My Clients There”
so the difference is only “the”. is this on purpose? H1 and Title should be different at least by one word or could they be the same?
question 2: are you using an organization schema plugin for your homepage? what about this page? is your organization schema plugin the reason that when I search for “malleeblue”, google shows your about us and contact us page in your sitelink below your search result? from my understanding is that you cannot do anything about this and this is all google’s own doing. if so, can you influence it so that it does show sitelinks in your search results?
question 3: what about rich snippet? i think you are using that here as well, since when I search for “1st-page-google-optimization-tips” I see a feedback review in your search result.
many thanks in advance
fb
FB, Yes, you can use the same words in Title and H1. Many sites (mine) will do this automatically and it is quite safe. The important thing is that you only have one H1 tag per page. I’m using Genesis which takes care of most schema. I am also using Raven Tools Schema plugin – which also provides the nice snippet in Google’s Search result… for now.
Great article. Love it. Thank you for a good intro into web site optimization.
Sometimes good content and internal links are enough to rank on some niches!
Really amazing article! Do you have any lines regarding how to rank video on the first page of google.We are trying to rank on first page on google.Thanks in Advance.
Nice Article. I wish It Will be useful for me .
Thanks Buddy for this
Great ! thanks for sharing such useful content ….start applying all your points to my website.
Hi, thank you fo this information. I am new to all of this and am trying to get my website moved up in rankings. How do you feel about the Google Adwords, is it worth the money? I’m guessing I need to pay to have it move up.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Thank you very much for this help- a. informative article. I will Try this all on my website
Great information. The best thing is the pictorial representation and the use of simple language. Great work chief.
Have been in this biz since 2004 and was doing very well with my alexa ranking around 12,000 word wide and 80 in Nigeria, the problem happen June this year when i took my site away from my webmaster who stated been nasty, we redesign it through another team, then the site stated drooping in ranking, we are no more on google first page, losing adsence revenue, bad SEO etc.
Is there any advice u can give me?
Hi Nat, I will respond to the email you sent. I am sorry that you have been treated so badly by your agency. Let’s take a look and see what can be done to bring you back up in Google’s search results.
yeh is so bad that 5 staff will be fired this month because our adsence revenue can not run the office again.
This is probably the most detailed and accurate post I have ever seen online! On a related note, one of my websites got hit with “negative seo” which is not something that can be seen. Is there a tool or action that can be used to enhance a website?
Nicely written and detailed…. Is the meta description a direct ranking factor? Because I hear from others that it is just to increase CTR and not a ranking factor.
Since it is written into search results, often crafted by Google, I would definitely consider it a factor. Not the most important factor – but, since click through rates are also a factor I would encourage you to do it.
Awesome article informative information share! This article is definitely going to be one on my list of bookmarked so I can go back to refer to it again & again! Thank you so much for sharing there tips!
Outstanding post! Thanks for sharing your great experience through this effective and helpful tips.
Nicely written and detailed…. Is the meta description a direct ranking factor? Because I hear from others that it is just to increase CTR and not a ranking factor.
Really great article. A lot of what I see written about SEO lately is just the heavy-hitting quick stuff, but Google still places weight on h1 tags and the other finer details as well. Image attributes are another big one. When I help others with their SEO, the first thing I do is look over their images, especially if they have any kind of a store or blog. When you think of how many pages are on a site, that can be a big number depending on the kind of site, but these days, most people have a ton of images, often far more than pages, but they’ll have file names. That’s not doing anything for Google. Pay attention to alt tags and meta data and you’ve already made Google a happy camper.
Thank you David! It is a very useful and informative article!
I am sure it will help me in my business.
Thanks again!
Hi,
The google search engine does not display my website when I enter the keywords such as “rent backdrop stand”, “rent cake stand” etc.
Will you be able to take a look?
Thanks!
Very important information thank you.
Hi,
I seemed to have covered most of your actions above, but still very poor seo.
The customers I do attract seem to buy just one size and one product although I have over 4,000
variables.
I would welcome any suggestions to improve
Awesome article informative information share! This article is definitely going to be one on my list of bookmarked so I can go back to refer to it again & again! Thank you so much for sharing there tips
Do I need to populate my blog posts with internal links to rank higher?
The short answer is yes. Internal links are counted as backlinks and should point in a natural way to your most important content.
My Alexa ranking was good but now is going very bad, what could be the cause?
why is my Adsence RPM and CPM droping?
Good Article, I have notice improvement on my website after I took your advice, David. However it is very difficult to write quality content as most of your competitor had already covered that topic.
I was excited to uncover this web site. I want too tto thank you for ones time due too this fantastic read!!
I definitely enjoyed every pazrt of it and i also have you saved to fav to look at new things on your blog.
Hello there, You’ve done an incredible job. I’ll definitely digg it and personally recommend to my friends.
I am sure they will be benefited from this web site.
That is very interesting, You’re a very skilled blogger.
I’ve joined your rss feed and sit up for in the hunt for more of your wonderful post.
Additionally, I have shared your web site in my social networks
Hi David Trounce,
I’ve newly started to blog and start writing good content but not get good search result from google so I implement you this guide on my blog and now waiting for result so thanks for your this post,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on how to get on the first page
of google. Regards
I really like reading an article that can make men and women think.
Also, thank you for allowing me to comment!
Useful info. Lucky me I found your site accidentally, and
I am shocked why this coincidence didn’t happened in advance!
I bookmarked it.
Thanks. That’s great!
Thanks for the SEO tips, very good information.
My developer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP.
I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses.
But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on a number of websites for about
a year and am nervous about switching to another platform.
I have heard very good things about blogengine.net. Is there a way
I can import all my wordpress content into it? Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!
Hi, great blog! Does running a blog similar to this require a
massive amount work?I’ve virtually no knowledge of coding, however, I was hoping to start my own blog in the near future. Anyhow, if you have any ideas or techniques for new blog owners please share. I know this is off subject, however, I just needed to ask. Thanks a lot!
you are in reality a good webmaster. The web site loading speed is incredible.
It kind of feels that you are doing any unique trick. Moreover,
The contents are masterwork. you have done a great job in this subject!
Perfect piece of work you have done, this website is
really cool ith good info.
From the article I come to know a few things that I avoid more and always intended to rank and improve the SERP. Now it’s a good way to know the techniques and I will apply them to rank. Thanks for the important website ranking points
Very good article, I will also apply it on my website to rank it ASAP.
Good idea Haadi!
Thanks so much for sharing. Your points are spot on especially our sites besides doing keyword research we really need to do on-page and off-page seo. And guest blogging is great too.
Thanks for the in-depth post on optimizing pages for SEO. Time to get to work…